A Potted Herring and Sixpence

I can’t tell the difference between this story and a dead crab.

Grinnin’ at me from the busted-up shards of glass was that swashbucklin’ mug of Captain Morgan, a bloke I trusted more than me own blinking eyeballs — which, mind, is sayin’ somethin’ when yer peepers’ve been stealin’ me sleep like a pickpocket wrestlin’ a fogbank in a damp alley. Wot’s that, ‘Enry? ‘E’s gone round the bend, ‘e ‘as, and the cat’s doing the can-can on me teacups.

When the world turned arse and kicked me biscuits into the Thames and turned me hopes into a puddin’ of despair, ol’ Captain Morgan was there, swaddlin’ me sorrows like Her Majesty herself had popped round for a cuppa — which she bluddy well ‘as not, but we’re chummy as toast in me mind. A pox upon ye, Sir Noodlebrain of Whiffington! And Lord Flapdoodle of Bumlington, may yer wig fly off into the tempestuous arms of a wayward seagull!

Yeah, that’s right, ladies and gents: Hope-less. I’m toast burnt on both sides, dipped in a custard of misfortune, and still smothered in me mum’s fruitcake of existential dread. Wot’s fer pudding? Oh, me ‘addock’s off. Cor, blimey wi' a salad fork. The seagulls cackle like a council of ancient magistrates flinging custard pies at a court of invisible dukes.

That bottle weren’t just nearly full — it were a flamin’ lighthouse of salvation in a teacup tempest, a beacon shoutin’ “drink me, ye fool!” The Island Market? Shut. Everyone on the island who might help me get gloriously trollied? Off playin’ invisible cricket with the King’s own hound, I reckon, or I’d only scared ’em off meself.

I rummaged frantically, found a sad little bottle of vanilla extract and cough syrup weak enough to lull a gnat into philosophical contemplation. Couldn’t even get a field mouse to do the jitterbug on that, let alone meself. Wot’s that, Shirley? You call that a drink? Bah! I spit a metaphor so tangled it nearly bit me own arse.

The Gas-n-Grub on the main drag were open ’til 8:00, me last hope for a proper stiff one. Nine miles across the bay to the Isle of Wight, waves prancing like drunken ballerinas in a hurricane, me tiny 14-foot skiff wobblin’ like a royal crown on a head of custard. Desperate times, me duck. Desperate times indeed.

I waved me arms like I was crowning a court of imaginary dukes mid-storm — “Form a line, you lily-livered lords! Fetch me a coronet and a jellied eel, posthaste!” — the wind snatched me hat and the gulls delivered missives of insult, squawking, “Ye art a rattle-skull of the highest order!” I nearly capsized while reciting a soliloquy about me misfortune, rhyming with the fury of a lunatic bard and the grace of a tap-dancing hedgehog.

And oh, the royal ceremony was spectacular: I knighted a floating barrel “Sir Tipsy McSoggy,” bestowed a tiara of seaweed on a particularly judgmental gull, and commanded the waves to step aside for my heroic passage, which they ignored with great dignity. Blimey, me skiff spun like a teapot in a blender and I cursed like the bastard lovechild of Shakespeare and a market crier.

And that, me hearties, is how I survived, staggering, swaying, swearing, soliloquizing, and still unbowed. That’s the tale, finished, innit? S’trewth!